X

Thank you for sharing!

Your article was successfully shared with the contacts you provided.

Before STEWART, SOUTHWICK and ENGELHARDT, Circuit Judges. LESLIE H. SOUTHWICK, Circuit Judge: An individual in Texas and another in Virginia separately obtained loans from the same lender to pay education expenses. Both later filed for bankruptcy in their respective states. In time, orders of discharge were entered. One of the discharged debtors then filed suit against the lender in the same Bankruptcy Court of the Southern District of Texas that had ordered the discharge of his debts. Later, the Virginia debtor joined the Texas suit. The suit seeks to certify a nationwide class of those who claim their education-loan debts were validly discharged but from whom this lender continues to demand payment. A declaratory judgment, injunction, and damages are sought. The lender filed a motion for summary judgment, arguing bankruptcy courts cannot enforce the injunctions arising from discharge orders entered by courts in other judicial districts, and these private-education-loan debts are statutorily excepted from discharge. The bankruptcy court held the opposite as to both, then certified the two holdings for interlocutory appeal. We conclude that a bankruptcy court does not have authority to enforce the discharge injunctions entered in other districts. On the other hand, we agree with the bankruptcy court that the particular education loans involved here are not statutorily excepted from discharge. The cause is REMANDED. FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY In 2009, Evan Crocker[1] obtained a $15,000 loan to fund his bar examination preparation. The lender was a subsidiary of SLM Corporation, d/b/a Sallie Mae, which is a for-profit, public corporation whose loans are not part of any governmental loan program. The loan documents informed Crocker that his repayment obligation “may not be dischargeable in bankruptcy.” Crocker’s loan was transferred to SLM Education Credit Finance Corporation, which subsequently became Navient Credit Finance Corporation. In the complaint, Navient Solutions is said to be the entity pursuing collection. We will not differentiate among Navient entities in our discussion. In 2015, Crocker filed for voluntary Chapter 7 bankruptcy in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas. He scheduled his bar-study loan claim as an “Educational . . . Private loan” and did not dispute the debt. In February 2016, the court granted him a discharge under 11 U.S.C. § 727, informed him that “[m]ost debts are covered by the discharge, but not all,” and closed his case. Michael Shahbazi has a similar story. In 2002, Shahbazi obtained an $11,658.99 loan from Sallie Mae for tuition and expenses while he attended a technical school. He was given notice that his loan was “an education loan that must be repaid.” Exactly how Navient obtained its interest is unclear to us, but it is servicing this loan. In 2011, Shahbazi filed for voluntary Chapter 7 bankruptcy in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. He scheduled his Sallie Mae loan as a “Student Loan” and did not dispute the debt. In December 2011, the court granted him a discharge and closed his bankruptcy proceeding. This discharge order specifically listed “Debts for most student loans” as not being discharged. It is alleged that after both discharges, Navient had both of these plaintiffs contacted frequently by telephone and email to demand repayment. In August 2016, Crocker filed an adversary proceeding against Navient in the Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas, the same court that had granted him a discharge. He sought (1) a declaratory judgment that his private education debt had been discharged; (2) entry of judgment holding Navient in contempt for violating the injunction arising from his discharge; and (3) a temporary injunction. The court entered an agreed preliminary injunction on August 18, 2016, barring Navient from pursuing collection until further order. Crocker, with Shahbazi as an additional plaintiff, filed an amended complaint, seeking to certify a nationwide class of those who (1) obtained prepetition private education loans from Navient or related companies to cover expenses at an institution not accredited under Title IV; (2) later filed for bankruptcy and were issued discharge orders; (3) have never reaffirmed their prepetition private education loan debt; and (4) are being induced to pay their allegedly discharged private education loans. Damages were now also sought. Navient moved for summary judgment on these claims, arguing that a bankruptcy court has no jurisdiction to interpret and enforce discharge orders entered by courts in other judicial districts and that the plaintiffs’ education loans were nondischargeable. The bankruptcy court denied the motion in March 2018.[2] It rejected that the general rule giving an issuing court sole authority to enforce its own injunctions applied to the automatic injunction created by statute when a bankruptcy court grants a discharge under 11 U.S.C. § 727. The court also determined that the kind of loans for educational purposes relevant here, which the parties refer to as “private loans,” were not within the ambit of the Bankruptcy Code’s bar on the discharge of some student loans. See 11 U.S.C. § 523(a)(8). In the same order, the bankruptcy court first authorized an interlocutory appeal, then certified the order for direct appeal to this court, eschewing the usual initial appellate review by a district court. A bankruptcy court may certify a ruling for direct review by a circuit court of appeals when, among other reasons, it “involves a question of law as to which there is no controlling decision” by that circuit court or the Supreme Court, or because an appeal at that stage in the proceedings “may materially advance the progress of the case.” 28 U.S.C. § 158(d)(2)(A)(i), (iii). If a bankruptcy court so certifies, the circuit court of appeals then exercises its discretion. § 158(d)(2)(A). A motions panel of this court granted the unopposed motion to authorize the appeal. DISCUSSION We review “grants and denials of summary judgment de novo. Summary judgment is appropriate when ‘there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.’” Lyda Swinterton Builders, Inc. v. Okla. Sur. Co., 903 F.3d 435, 444 (5th Cir. 2018) (quoting FED. R. CIV. P. 56). Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56 is incorporated into the Federal Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure. FED. R. BANKR. P. 7056. Navient has two principal contentions on appeal. The first is that the bankruptcy court either has no jurisdiction to enforce the statutory injunctions arising from a bankruptcy discharge that another bankruptcy court ordered, or at least for prudential reasons may not do so. Second, Navient contends that the plaintiffs’ education loans are within the category of loans that under the Bankruptcy Code are nondischargeable. There are no meaningful factual issues presented to us. Instead, we have legal issues of statutory interpretation. We now turn to those. I. Authority to enforce a Section 524 discharge order entered by a bankruptcy court in another judicial district In broad brush, these proceedings concern two closed Chapter 7 bankruptcies in which generic discharges, i.e., discharges not specifying the discharged debts, were issued at completion. A discharge “operates as an injunction” against an extensive list of actions that a creditor might take to collect on the discharged debt. 11 U.S.C. § 524(a)(2), (3). The discharge is a “substantive right,” and that right is “often enforced by a motion for contempt, but [it is] also enforceable through a declaratory judgment action.” Nat’l Gypsum Co. v. NGC Settlement Tr. & Asbestos Claims Mgmt. Corp. (In re Nat’l Gypsum Co.), 118 F.3d 1056, 1063 (5th Cir. 1997) (citations omitted). The declaratory judgment was sought in National Gypsum by the opening of an adversary proceeding in the bankruptcy court that had granted the debtor’s discharge. Id. at 1060. Indeed, Federal Rule of Bankruptcy Procedure 7001(6) states that an adversary proceeding is, among other things, “a proceeding to determine the dischargeability of a debt.” Thus, an available procedure under National Gypsum is a declaratory judgment action. A violation of the declaratory judgment will lead to its own remedies such as “damages or an injunction.” United Teacher Assocs. Ins. Co. v. Union Labor Life Ins. Co., 414 F.3d 558, 570 (5th Cir. 2005); see also 28 U.S.C. § 2202. The issue for us is identifying the proper court or courts in which such an action can be brought. May a bankruptcy court other than the one that granted the discharge enforce the injunction? The closest this circuit has come to answering the question is to hold, in the class action context, that a bankruptcy judge in the Southern District of Texas may exercise ‘jurisdiction over claims that arise in other cases administered by other judges” in the same judicial district. Wilborn v. Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. {In re Wilborn), 609 F.3d 748, 753 (5th Cir. 2010). The Wilborn court only briefly discussed the issue of enforcing an injunction arising from the discharge order of a different bankruptcy court in the same district. In the present proceedings, the bankruptcy court’s understanding of its authority extended well beyond its home district. The question of a bankruptcy judge’s injunctive reach within its own district has not been answered. The two plaintiff-debtors received general discharges in bankruptcy. Central to the dispute is that Congress has excepted from discharge, among other categories of debt, certain types of student-loan debt. 11 U.S.C. § 523(a)(8). We will deal with the issue of dischargeability in the second part of our opinion and will wait to quote the relevant statute until then. We have already summarized that the bankruptcy court at this stage answered only two questions. The first answer we review is the “yes” the court gave to the question of whether a bankruptcy court in a judicial district other than the one in which the discharge was entered has authority to interpret the discharge and enforce the injunction. The court rejected Navient’s argument that the general rule should apply that the court issuing an injunction is the only one that can enforce it through contempt proceedings. The bankruptcy court first held that general rule was inapplicable because no discretion or individual judgment is exercised in creating the injunction.[3] The form order used for the discharges for the initial two plaintiffs here does not even mention an injunction. The injunction instead arises from this statutory command: “A discharge in a case under this title . . . operates as an injunction against the commencement or continuation of an action.” § 524(a). Because there is “no subjective thought process that requires deference nor is there any risk of misinterpretation of a particular judge’s reasoning,” the bankruptcy court concluded that the general limitation on enforcement of injunctions only by the issuing court was inapplicable. The court did not cite any case authority to support its analysis. The basic point was that the bankruptcy statutes themselves make clear that no purpose is served by requiring a return to the issuing court to interpret a discharge injunction. Navient, of course, disagrees that discharge injunctions should be treated differently than others. A principal authority it cites is one of this court’s precedents dealing with non-bankruptcy injunctions. There, Chief Judge Charles Clark explained in the context of a claim of securities fraud that “[e]nforcement of an injunction through a contempt proceeding must occur in the issuing jurisdiction because contempt is an affront to the court issuing the order.” Waffenschmidt v. MacKay, 763 F.2d 711, 716 (5th Cir. 1985). A bankruptcy court does continue to have jurisdiction to enforce its orders, and that jurisdiction remains even after the bankruptcy case is closed. See, e.g., Galaz v. Katona, 841 F.3d 316, 322 (5th Cir. 2016). The issue for us arises because Galaz and other Fifth Circuit precedents do not hold that authority is exclusive in the original court. Navient also argues that regardless of jurisdiction, there are prudential reasons supporting its argument. Navient’s appellate brief recounts the background for an injunction that arises from a discharge, drawing from a scholarly article. Charles Jordan Tabb, The Historical Evolution of the Bankruptcy Discharge, 65 AM. BANKR. L. J. 325 (1991). We look at parts of the background in order to understand how a bankruptcy discharge was enforced before a statute was enacted that imposed an injunction. Importantly, we also consider whether another part of the same statutory enactment arguably created a right of enforcement of the injunction by “foreign” courts. If so, then its repeal in 1978 has some meaning. There was no statutory injunction arising from a discharge until 1970. Id. at 326 n.3. A House Report on 1970 bankruptcy legislation explained problems with prior law, including the harassment of debtors: The present discharge provisions of the Bankruptcy Act authorize the bankruptcy court to determine the right to a discharge, but do not give the bankruptcy court express jurisdiction to determine the effect of the discharge. . . . Under present practice, if a bankrupt is sued in State court on a discharged debt, the State court may determine whether the debt in question was or was not discharged. In other words, the jurisdiction over the granting and the enforcing of a discharge is divided, with the result that debtors are frequently harassed and coerced by creditors into paying debts that may have been discharged. H.R. REP. NO. 91-1502, at 3 (1970). The 1970 legislation was adopted and provided for an injunction: An order of discharge shall— declare that any judgment theretofore or thereafter obtained in any other court is null and void . . . ; and enjoin all creditors whose debts are discharged from thereafter instituting or continuing any action or employing any process to collect such debts as personal liabilities of the bankrupt. Act of Oct. 29, 1970, Pub. L. No. 91-467, § 3, 84 Stat. 990, 991 (amending Section 14 of the 1898 Bankruptcy Code, codified as 11 U.S.C. § 32(f)). The statutory detailing of the injunction that results from a discharge has been revised, but the meaning for our purposes is the same: the discharge “operates as an injunction against the commencement or continuation of an action” to collect a relevant debt. 11 U.S.C. § 524(a)(2). Nothing in the statute creating an injunction explains whether this form of injunction could be enforced only by the bankruptcy court in the issuing district. Another 1970 provision, though, which appeared immediately after the injunction section, did specifically refer to enforcement in other courts. It allowed the order of discharge to be registered in another district and to be “enforced in like manner” in the new district as in the issuing district: An order of discharge which has become final may be registered in any other district by filing therein a certified copy of such order and when so registered shall have the same effect as an order of the bankruptcy court of the district where registered and may be enforced in like manner. § 3, 84 Stat. 990, 991 (codified as 11 U.S.C. § 32(g)).[4] Bankruptcy Rule 404(g) used almost this exact language. 11 U.S.C. app. at 283 (Supp. III 1974). The 1970 subsection on registration was repealed with adoption of the Bankruptcy Code of 1978. 11 U.S.C. Tbl. I (showing that former Section 32(g) was repealed). Further, the Bankruptcy Rule that implemented Section 32(g) was revised after the 1978 Code was adopted by deleting “may be enforced in like manner.” FED. R. BANKR. P. 4004(f). Enacted revisions in the wording of statutes are part of “statutory history,” not “the sort of unenacted legislative history that often is neither truly legislative (having failed to survive bicameralism and presentment) nor truly historical (consisting of advocacy aimed at winning in future litigation what couldn’t be won in past statutes).” BNSF Ry. Co. v. Loos, 139 S. Ct. 893, 906 (2019) (Gorsuch, J., dissenting). When Congress makes a significant change in language when it amends an existing statute, it “presumptively connotes a change in meaning.” ANTONIN Scalia & Bryan A. Garner, Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal TEXTS 256 (2012). Congress’s decision to eliminate language that seemed to allow enforcement of the discharge injunction in a new district[5] gives weight to the argument that after the 1978 Bankruptcy Code was adopted, enforcement in “like manner” in a different district was prohibited. We now turn to the law that exists today. Registering a judgment in a new court is not a creature primarily of bankruptcy law. Some quite learned professors described the adoption of a general statutory provision for registration in 1948, after an earlier Civil Rules version was rejected as arguably being beyond the rulemaking power of the Supreme Court. 11 Charles Alan Wright, Arthur R. Miller, & Mark Kay Kane, Federal Practice and Procedure § 2787 (2012). The current statute states: A judgment in an action for the recovery of money or property entered in any court of appeals, district court, bankruptcy court, or in the Court of International Trade may be registered by filing a certified copy of the judgment in any other district or, with respect to the Court of International Trade, in any judicial district, when the judgment has become final by appeal or expiration of the time for appeal or when ordered by the court that entered the judgment for good cause shown. Such a judgment entered in favor of the United States may be so registered any time after judgment is entered. A judgment so registered shall have the same effect as a judgment of the district court of the district where registered and may be enforced in like manner. 28 U.S.C. § 1963. Bankruptcy courts were added to the statute in 1996. Federal Courts Improvement Act of 1996, Pub. L. No. 104-317, § 203, 110 Stat. 3847, 3849. Section 1963 permits the clearing of jurisdictional hurdles when the prior judgment was entered in a suit in which federal question was the basis for jurisdiction. The hurdle arises because “an action solely to enforce the judgment would lack that federal question jurisdiction and therefore could not be maintained in federal court” absent some other jurisdictional basis. JAMES William Moore, et al., Moore’s Federal Practice

 
Reprints & Licensing
Mentioned in a Law.com story?

License our industry-leading legal content to extend your thought leadership and build your brand.

More From ALM

With this subscription you will receive unlimited access to high quality, online, on-demand premium content from well-respected faculty in the legal industry. This is perfect for attorneys licensed in multiple jurisdictions or for attorneys that have fulfilled their CLE requirement but need to access resourceful information for their practice areas.
View Now
Our Team Account subscription service is for legal teams of four or more attorneys. Each attorney is granted unlimited access to high quality, on-demand premium content from well-respected faculty in the legal industry along with administrative access to easily manage CLE for the entire team.
View Now
Gain access to some of the most knowledgeable and experienced attorneys with our 2 bundle options! Our Compliance bundles are curated by CLE Counselors and include current legal topics and challenges within the industry. Our second option allows you to build your bundle and strategically select the content that pertains to your needs. Both options are priced the same.
View Now
September 18, 2024 - September 19, 2024
Dallas, TX

Join General Counsel and Senior Legal Leaders at the Premier Forum Designed For and by General Counsel from Fortune 1000 Companies


Learn More
October 15, 2024
Dallas, TX

The Texas Lawyer honors attorneys and judges who have made a remarkable difference in the legal profession in Texas.


Learn More
April 16, 2024 - April 17, 2024
Chicago, IL

Join General Counsel and Senior Legal Leaders at the Premier Forum Designed For and by General Counsel from Fortune 1000 Companies


Learn More

Atlanta s John Marshall Law School is seeking to hire one or more full-time, visiting Legal WritingInstructors to teach Legal Research, Anal...


Apply Now ›

Lower Manhattan firm seeks a premises liability litigator (i.e., depositions, SJ motions, and/or trials) with at least 3-6 years of experien...


Apply Now ›

At NJM, a top-rated insurance company, we are seeking an Attorney on our Workers Compensation legal team with between 3 and 5 years of expe...


Apply Now ›
04/15/2024
Connecticut Law Tribune

MELICK & PORTER, LLP PROMOTES CONNECTICUT PARTNERS HOLLY ROGERS, STEVEN BANKS, and ALEXANDER AHRENS


View Announcement ›
04/11/2024
New Jersey Law Journal

Professional Announcement


View Announcement ›
04/08/2024
Daily Report

Daily Report 1/2 Page Professional Announcement 60 Days


View Announcement ›